Questions 1 and 3: Model Answers (WJEC Eduqas GCSE English Language)

Read the passage from Ask an Astronaut in the separate Resource Material.

1. What job did Tim Peake have to do on his spacewalk?                                           [1]

2. Why did Mission Control end the spacewalk?                                                          [1]

3. Who did Tim Peake receive a message of support from?                                  [1]

At 12:55pm on Friday 15th January 2016, my fellow astronaut, Len Kopra, and I got the message from Mission Control back on Earth to leave the space station to repair a unit on a faulty solar panel. Any nerves that I had before my spacewalk were dealt with by making sure that I was completely prepared for what I was about to do and the moment I felt any anxiety disappear was when Len opened the hatch to space. Night was approaching, the sun was low on the horizon and I remember pulling on my pressurised space gloves and thinking, ‘Finally, time to get to work!’

Our task was to replace a faulty unit on one of the solar panels at the edge of the space station. It meant the space station was down to one-eighth of its electrical power, so it was an important job to restore the space station to full capability.

During the spacewalk Len and I had been working on separate tasks, but we were not too far away from each other when it became clear that his spacesuit had developed a fault. Water had begun to enter his helmet and Mission Control told us to get safely back inside the space station. Fortunately, we had already completed the task of restoring the space station back to full power, and the spacewalk had been declared a success.

It wasn’t until much later that evening that I realised how much interest there had been in the spacewalk and the amount of support I had received from people back home. Messages of encouragement had been flooding in during the day. There was even a tweet from Sir Paul McCartney: ‘Good luck — we’re all watching. Wishing you a happy stroll outdoors in the universe.’

1. Repair a faulty unit on one of the solar panels                                                   ✅

2. Len’s spacesuit had developed a fault                                                               ✅

3. Sir Paul McCartney                                                                                            ✅

To answer the following questions you must read the article by Robert Wood on the opposite page.

1. How long had Otto Lilienthal been experimenting with flying machines?                 [1]

2. How high did Otto Lilienthal go in his flying machine?                                               [1]

3. What evidence is there that Otto Lilienthal was pleased with his flight?                    [1]

The flying machine lay on the grass in the bright sunshine. Seeing its twenty-four square yards of snow-white cloth that made up the pair of enormous wings spread before me, I felt privileged, as if I was witnessing the very start of the flying age. So perfectly had Lilienthal constructed the machine that it was impossible to find a single loose cord, and the cloth was under such tension that the whole machine rang like a drum when rapped with the knuckles. Here was a flying machine constructed by an engineer of great ability, the result of eight years of successful experimenting.

I stood further down the hill with my camera and waited anxiously for the start. He faced the wind and stood like an athlete waiting for the starting pistol. At the precise moment the breeze increased a little, he took three rapid steps forward and was instantly lifted from the ground, sailing off from the summit. He went over my head at a terrific pace, at a height of about fifty feet, the wind playing wild tunes on the tense cords of the machine, and was past me before I had time to focus the camera on him.

For a moment I could see the top of the flying machine, which suddenly swerved dangerously to the left when a gust of wind caught it. However, with a powerful kick of his legs he expertly brought the machine once more under his control and sailed away below me across the fields. As he neared the end of his flight, and came within a foot of the ground, he cleverly allowed the wind to strike under the wings and he dropped lightly to the earth. I ran after him and found him quite breathless from excitement and the exertion.

1. Eight years                                                                                                           ✅

2. About fifty feet                                                                                              ✅

3. He was ‘quite breathless from excitement’                     ✅